They’re loud. They’re massive. And, if you live anywhere near one, you probably don’t want it in your backyard.
But for a growing crop of young electricians, America’s data center boom isn’t a nuisance — it’s a jackpot.
While a February poll from Blue Rose Research found that 52% of Americans oppose data centers being built near their communities (with just 16% in favor), the hulking hubs powering our AI-obsessed future are quietly minting six-figure earners — many of them under 30.
It’s not happening in a vacuum, either.
As previously reported by The Post, Gen Z is increasingly ditching the four-year degree in favor of trade work, with one 2024 Harris Poll conducted for Intuit Credit Karma finding that nearly half of Gen Zers are considering blue-collar careers — earning them the nickname the “toolbelt generation.”
“The electricians that I met most recently at a data center in Plano were making $260,000 a year,” “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney, pointing to Texas as ground zero for the surge.
And that’s not even the wildest part.
“It’s true they had no debt, but the most consequential component of that meeting was the fact that all three of them had been poached three times in the prior 18 months,” Rowe added. “That’s what’s going on in certain parts of the country, in the electric game right now.”
In other words: welcome to the electrician arms race.
Rowe likened the frenzy to “the draft in the Major Leagues,” with companies aggressively recruiting skilled tradespeople as trillion-dollar tech firms scramble to build out AI infrastructure at breakneck speed.
Plano — about 20 miles north of Dallas — has become one of the hottest zones in the country, now home to more than 200 data centers, as per DataCenters.
And the spending spree is only heating up: Dallas-based developer DataBank recently secured $2 billion in financing to construct three more facilities in the area, according to Business Insider.
The result? A gold rush for electricians willing to wire the future. But every boom has its backlash.
Residents living near these sprawling facilities say they’re paying the price — literally — citing rising electricity bills and fears over falling property values.
Meanwhile, tech giants are snapping up land at eye-watering prices, sometimes elbowing out housing developments altogether.
In one case, as reported by the Daily Mail, Amazon paid $700 million for a Virginia parcel that a homebuilder had purchased for just $50 million a few years earlier, scrapping plans for more than 500 new homes.
Still, Rowe says the real story isn’t just about data centers — it’s about a long-overdue reckoning in how Americans think about work.
“Sixteen years ago this month, I was in DC. I testified before both houses of Congress about the need for some kind of national effort to reinvigorate the trade,” he said.
“When we put our thumb on the scale for one form of education, a university for your degree, when we said that was the best path for the most people, we implicitly suggested that anyone with the temerity to embark upon a different path was indeed the proud owner of something second class.”
His verdict?
“That’s when the wheels started to come off the bus… the chickens have come home to roost for sure.”
To be clear, not every electrician is pulling in a quarter-million paycheck.
Most data center electricians earn closer to $150,000, according to construction search firm The Birmingham Group — still a hefty sum, but often padded by long hours and overtime.
And outside the data center boomtowns, the picture looks very different: the median salary for electricians nationwide was $62,350 in 2024, according to US Census data.
But in the right place, at the right time, with the right skillset?
Turns out the hottest job in tech doesn’t require coding at all — just a hard hat, a steady hand and a willingness to plug into America’s electrified future.
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